AceWise Investments Presents: AWI-POKER

Week 2

14/04 - 21/04

Ok then Week 2, as you can see by my "yo-yo" graph variance decided to enter the equation. In fact I broke even after 80 games! Now these kind of runs can be de-moralising and make you start to question your own game. The old me would've gone off the rail and started to sit at higher buy ins stts and try and get out the rut so to speak. The thing is as Poker player you need to embrace variance, its what makes the game so great and accessible to everyone. It means a complete amateur can in the short term can beat someone like Phil Ivey. The keyword here is "short term", this is why you should treat variance as a Grandma you don't see so often. She comes to visit you every so often and you just have to make sure you put on your fake smile hope you don't do anything stupid get through it and say goodbye at the end of the day and wait for her to visit again (on your birthday or something). I must now point out that i don't condone not visiting your Grandma on a regular basis!

Embrace variance....oh and your Grandma

Before i move on to some hand analysis i would like to bring your attention to the following video: Andrew Feldman Crying. Now when I've seen Andrew on TV he seemed like a stand-up guy that knew what he was doing who was often criticised for his "nitty" play and nicknamed Andrew Foldman. Now i dont think there's anything wrong in having your own style of play if your an opponent you would just adjust your play accordingly so the term "nit" being used as a derogatory term within the Poker world is plain stupid and if anything your just showing your unwillingness to adapt.

Now after watching this video i had nothing but disappointment at Andrew. Poker to the outside world has a certain stigma attached to it where its deemed shady low life gamblers play it and everyone is a big loser in the game. I'm sure you've had a conversation with someone about poker like this:

Work Friend: "So what did you do last night?"
You: "Oh i played some poker at a casino"
Work Friend:"Really? Did you win much?"
You: "Yeah i won about £120"
Work Friend:"But how much did you lose?"
You: ".........."

So when a young kid starts acting like he has his entire life is on one tournament and starts "praying" for a certain card to come down it reeks of desperation, the same kind of desperation that appears with de-generate gamblers. This desperation turns to anger about the minor things, in this case his water! Jesus Andrew just get a grip, its not the floor staffs fault your opponent just outplayed you. The same kind of behaviour you would experience if someone was playing a fruit machine or roulette. What should differentiate a Poker player to a gambler is that we know the Maths, we know the risks and we make informed decisions so in long term we will win. We should be viewed as Stock Brokers are viewed, we make calculated risks which we believe will give us profit.

Characters within poker are good for the game and make great TV. Your not going to get the average TV viewer with no experience of poker watch 6 poker players with their hoods up and IPOD on not saying a word. But you can physically see that Andrew hasn't "invented" this character and it genuinely pains him whilst sweating 5 cards being put down on a bit of green felt. The tears at the end kind of sums this up. I just hope all our flagship UK Players don't act in the same manor.

Hand Analysis

Stt Concept #42 - Push the bubble

So we are fortunate to make the bubble of a stt (e.g 4 players left 3 get paid). We have a situation where we have more chips than the the rest of the table or the 2 smaller stacks, what do we do? Basically we need to put the stacks smaller than us under tournament life pressure as often as possible, as they don't wish to have put all this time in without any reward, the following 2 hands i played hopefully demonstrate this:

(18man stt, 4 get payed)

PokerStars - $6.37+$0.63|100/200 NL - Holdem - 5 players

UTG: 4,541.00
CO: 5,688.00
BTN: 2,818.00
Hero (SB): 13,036.00
BB: 917.00

UTG posts ante 25.00, CO posts ante 25.00, BTN posts ante 25.00, Hero posts ante 25.00, BB posts ante 25.00, Hero posts SB 100.00, BB posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 425.00) Hero has    

fold, CO raises to 500.00, fold, Hero raises to 1,600.00, fold, fold

(same sit n go)


PokerStars - $6.37+$0.63|100/200 NL - Holdem - 5 players

CO: 4,566.00
BTN: 6,213.00
SB: 2,943.00
Hero (BB): 12,336.00
UTG: 942.00

CO posts ante 25.00, BTN posts ante 25.00, SB posts ante 25.00, Hero posts ante 25.00, UTG posts ante 25.00, SB posts SB 100.00, Hero posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 425.00) Hero has    

fold, fold, BTN raises to 500.00, fold, Hero raises to 1,600.00, fold


In both situations you can see that because there is a short stack with 5 BB, its very easy to 3 bet the original raiser with any 2 cards. If he shoves i can just fold and give him benefit for a real hand. But I'm making him risk his tournament life where if justs fold all of his hands 99% of the time he will finish in the money. Its vital to pick up on these kind of situations as its quick and effective way to build your stack and push for a top 2 finish when the bubble bursts.

One More hand..... (for brags)



PokerStars - $6.37+$0.63|25/50 NL - Holdem - 8 players

BTN: 2,003.00
Hero (SB): 1,538.00
BB: 1,360.00
UTG: 3,982.00
UTG+1: 556.00
MP: 1,390.00
MP+1: 1,700.00
CO: 971.00

Hero posts SB 25.00, BB posts BB 50.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 75.00) Hero has    

UTG raises to 150.00, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 450.00, fold, UTG raises to 850.00, fold

UTG shows  

What this doesnt show is that i tanked the time bank whilst chatting in the box. When UTG puts in the 4 bet i type in "im folding kings here". I type this in not to brag as i might be wrong but to try and talk my opponent into showing his hand. If he has AK or QQ here he will show to make you feel stupid. Once i folded my opponent showed out of courtesy (he was a fellow UK player) needless to say the rest of the table didn't believe me lol! You make think i should never kings here, in fact i wouldn't recommend doing so. My thought process is this. He's raised 3x UTG which is strong in the first place, i then 3 bet out of the SB, my position here is important as i 3 bet out of the blinds vs an EP raise is much stronger than just a UTG opener. As im willing to play for a big pot OOP. UTG just clicks it back (the min re-raise). Now what can he possibly do this with? He is happy for us to shove or call as he's reopened the action for the minimum. QQ or AK dont want to see flops so would just shove pre-flop. Therefore in my opinion its Aces and Aces only.  Also the Pokertracker stats didnt signify that my opponent was a maniac which in case i would just ship as he could have anything from 1010+ KQ+

Goals:

• Place on the stt leaderboard [ ]
• Reach $750 [ ]
• Comfortably play at least 7 tables at a time [X]